Jim Shella
2023
By Lee Giles
Working as a reporter at a television station in Grand Rapids, Jim Shella was pursuing his first interview with President Gerald Ford who was back home in Michigan from the White House.
When Jim asked for a one-on-one interview, the response of the exasperated President was “All right, (and NOT ‘gosh darn it’), you have three minutes and we’re leaving!”
Despite the more profane rejoinder, Jim got the interview. He remembers thinking, “that’s when I knew I had what it takes to be a political reporter.”
That was a pivotal moment for a younger Jim Shella and a rare one for a local reporter to even meet and speak to a President of the United States. It was more successful than when Jim attempted to get a sound bite from retired President George H.W. Bush. Jim asked for a quick comment as Bush was walking by. His gracious response, while never breaking stride, was, “I don’t have to do that anymore, and I don’t!”
Jim, a native of Minnesota, was awarded a degree in Mass Communications by St. Cloud State. His interest in politics started in high school, where he was “surrounded by journalism” since his parents subscribed to three daily newspapers and two weeklies. His first broadcasting jobs were in Iowa where he interviewed Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, and covered Ted Kennedy and the Iowa caucus in 1980.
As the job market grew for Jim, he covered Jimmy Carter in Michigan on the day when the deal was announced to bring the Iranian hostages home. Jim was working for a Grand Rapids TV station, when WISH-TV News Director Lee Giles, an Indiana Journalism Hall of Famer, hired Jim for the position of State House Reporter in December 1982. It is one of the most important and demanding coverage assignments for reporters in the state capital, but Jim immediately showed the aptitude and abilities that made his job a hall of fame news career for some four decades.
What is unique about Jim’s work record is that while with the same employer and in the same city for those decades, Jim became a journalist with multimedia impact. He not only reported daily for 34 years on WISH-TV, he also for a quarter of a century was host/producer of WFYI public television and radio’s “Indiana Week in Review.”
Jim calculates from 1991 to 2016, he hosted/produced 1,300 “Indiana Week in Review” programs that aired on both public and commercial broadcasting stations, while also conducting eight years of weekly recorded interviews with Gov. Evan Bayh, and seven years of similar weekly news conversations with Gov. Frank O’Bannon. Jim counts among his reporting assets his ability to gain access to news makers and experts on issues.
Among major political events he covered for his Indiana viewers were 14 national political conventions; scores of local, state and national elections; all the regular and special sessions of the Indiana General Assembly; and countless candidates’ political campaigns. Jim also routinely covered breaking news and general assignments.
Since about 2014, Jim has written a monthly column for the Indianapolis Business Journal on politics, politicians, and government. IBJ editor Lesley Weidenbener has found, “What Jim gives readers is far more and, in my judgment, far more important than simply opinion, he provides the kind of analysis that helps readers process information so they can form their own opinions. That’s because Jim has had decades of first-hand experience with the way government and politics truly operate and not from one political viewpoint, but from an objective position that is too often hard to find today.”
Retired WANE-TV News Director Ted Linn, who was Jim’s assistant news director at WISH, adds, “Jim’s ability to draw out both sides of contentious political issues with fairness and equality continues to be the model for Indiana political reporting.”
That kind of journalistic commitment solidified Jim as a reporter of availability and consequence with contacts and grass roots knowledge, and earned his reputation among his peers and the public for his currency, accuracy and fairness in a business that at times can be volatile with partisanships and subject to abuses and distortions of the truth and facts to say the least.
Jim’s excellence has been recognized over four decades. He won the first-place investigative news award from the Iowa Broadcast News Association in 1980. AP presented him with the 2004 award for best general news story and the Hall of Fame Broadcast award in 2017. He also received multiple other AP, UPI and Society of Professional Journalists awards. He was awarded the Sagamore of the Wabash by three Indiana governors, the Larry Conrad Award by the Indianapolis Press Club, and a special citation by the journalism school at Ball State University in 2017.
He also is committed to his community. Jim has worked with the board of his church council, including as president; has been a member of the board of the American Diabetes Association; is a member of the advisory board of the Bowen Center on Politics at Ball State University; served five years on the telecom and video services board of the City of Indianapolis, appointed by the mayor; and has been appointed by the governor to the Commission to Create an Oral History of the General Assembly.
Jim retired from WISH-TV in 2016 but continues working with the non-profit “Indiana Town Halls” and has participated so far in five different town halls organized with Indiana Congressional members. Over the years, he has also moderated a number of campaign debates among political candidates prior to the elections.
Pure and simple, Jim Shella is a journalist… the personification of the best in our business.